It's on my radar. I've been considering a fanless metal-box PC to use as a router, home entertainment system, and file hosting -- for a while now.

Even if I manage to squeeze $700+ for such a machine (and I don't want to buy something weak; I will invest in future proofing), the bigger issue for me is investing the time and effort. I know it'll make me a better programmer and sysadmin (I am an amateur sysadmin, won't deny that) but sometimes you just want stuff to work right away.

I'll get to it but yes, IMO that's the endgame here. Or buy a 5-pack Ubuiquiti and let it do its thing and use the fanless PC for everything else.

The machine doesn't have to be powerful at all, most of the consumer routers have ~1GB of ram and a few megabytes of flash. The machines I use don't cost much more than $100, I've never tried using something like the raspberry pi but that's only because I can never find a USB hub good enough to run WiFi with and my only pi3 is already dedicated as my desktop.

I know it doesn't have to be powerful but throughout my technical life I became sick and tired of having to restart routers every time they clearly show signs of temporary overload. If this is coming from potential hackers looking for holes, or my torrent client goes crazy once in a while, or the 2 live video streams + 2 low-ping games that me and my girlfriend are playing, or its logging subsystem is killing it because of slow memory -- I can't say. But I've grown weary of routers crapping out, even if it's once a month. So I'm gonna go all-in.

Plus I want to try and host a mail server and a website in the future as well, so I am looking for a powerful fanless machine that can do several things at once.